The year our sporting idols turned to clay

The sight of wrestler Sushil Kumar, head under towel, being led out by Delhi police caused two stabs of response. The awfulness of his fall was only the second. The first was about how, on any other day, Sushil could easily have taken down each man around him. Single-handedly. Bare-handedly. Instead, there he was, being paraded by the police, accused of murder, abduction, criminal conspiracy, criminal intimidation and more.

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That unravelling of our sole double individual Olympic medallist feels like the final, sour aftertaste from the last 12-odd months in Indian sport. When, with their sporting deeds set to one side, the timid selves of our sporting idols revealed themselves. Alongside the Covid-19 virus’s looming shadow of grief and loss, Indian sport has learnt that its worshipped gods are far less shiny and substantial than their relentlessly projected brand images, more shrunken than their myths would have us believe.

WATCH | The year our sporting idols fell: The Sushil Kumar saga

Qualities of ‘courage’ and ‘character’ in sport are overamplifications. Those words, in a sporting context, simply denote an athlete responding to an adverse game situation or quality opposition by standing their ground using highly developed, intensely trained athletic skills. That and no more.

In Indian sport’s response to the pandemic, we’ve have spotted the difference between real and fake. Between timely and urgent community outreach and the rapid backpedal of individual brand promotion. For all the patriot games our athletes play, during India’s greatest national calamity since independence, our biggest, richest, most popular sportspeople have come up short of even their own publicity.

The governors of the country’s biggest sport, the BCCI, have emerged not as caretakers for thousands of players and millions of fans but as just shabby cash-handlers.

Yet there are authentic sporting heroes, the givers and the doers, away from headlines, followers, bright lights or the likes. To shake off the dismal A-listers and Sushil’s sorry tale, I turned to the first tribe I had run into at the start of my career - Mumbai cricket- and found their core as strong as it had been, responding swiftly to those who needed them most and most urgently.

Last year, Ganesh Iyer, former BCCI umpire and Mumbai Cricket Association’s managing committee member, set up the ‘Lending A Hand’ (LAH) initiative with a bunch of friends through a WhatsApp group. They contacted fellow umpires, past and present, to raise money to help umpires and scorers in financial distress. LAH identified and raised funds for 47 umpires and 15 scorers. Founded in March, the first tranche of payments went out by April 10.

“You can’t wait for these things," Iyer said. “it was by the fraternity for the fraternity.”

This year, they are trying to find a way to support the education of local umpire Kiran Deo’s two young children. Deo died of Covid, aged 42 earlier in the year. LAH had already provided an amount raised to help Deo’s wife earlier this month.

The same principle, Iyer said, must apply right to the top of Indian cricket, the national team. “Do something for your fraternity. Do something for those boys who have not played for one year," he said. "You wouldn’t have succeeded if those ten others wouldn’t have played with you. Do something for them collectively, more concentrated… an Indian team effort, not an individual, personal thing.”

Mumbai curator and MCA apex committee member Nadim Memon has focussed on the 60-plus maalis (groundsmen) who work the city’s iconic maidans – Oval, Cross Maidan, Azad Maidan – and club pitches across Shivaji Park and Matunga. Mumbai cricket’s vast internal network was tapped to help groundsmen stranded during an eight-month lockdown.

“There are many who still live in the tents, who share accommodation with friends from their native places like bhelpuri sellers, guys who run small stalls, everyone needs help. If the lockdown is extended beyond May, it’ll get tougher,” Memon said.

Memon reached out to everyone he knew - politicians, police, Shiv Sena shakha workers - who could ensure the smooth transport of the food packets. On one occasion, the Mumbai police lent its van to move food through the check-posts.

Among this cricketing cavalry trying to make its way through bandobast, was former Mumbai and Baroda left arm-spinner Rajesh Pawar. The boot of his Jeep Compass filled with provisions bought from and packed by his neighbourhood grocer, Pawar helped maalis in Azad & Cross Maidan and Shivaji Park tide through a few months. Growing up in Mumbai’s BDD chawls, Pawar knew first-hand cricket’s role as livelihood. “Many people’s houses run on cricket,” Pawar said, “The maalis work the hardest, they don’t get paid that much. I could imagine their struggle.”

Employed by Indian Oil, Pawar believes in both giving back and paying forward: “When I was young, I couldn’t afford much. My seniors helped me gave me t-shirts, shoes, everything that I needed. I remember that. If I hadn’t got that support, I wouldn’t have gone as far as I did."

Mumbai u-19 coach for 2019-20, Pawar and his wife have come through Covid-19 themselves.

“I’m not a big businessman, but I thought at least joh mera limit hai, main karoon. (Let me do something within my means),” he said.

Stories like these echo across India’s sporting landscape, of people who have worked out what the word "champion" truly means. Not the boisterous noun, but the quiet verb. To protect and to fight for something bigger than yourself.

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